May Roundup

It’s that time of the month again, here are some of my favourite releases from May, in one handy playlist. This month I've included a couple I missed from the end of last month and a couple that come out at the beginning of June. Enjoy!

Tracklist:

Omar-S feat. L’Renee – SEX (Constant Gardens Posse Remix)

Leon Vynehall – Picture Frame (Clip)

West Norwood Cassette Library – Coming On Strong (Clip)

Jimmy Edgar – U Need Love

Boddika & Joy O – Dun Dun

Girl Unit – Ensemble (Club Mix)

Head High – Rave (Dirt Mix)

Guy Andrews – The Wait

XI – Joy / Fear

Swindle –If I Was A Super Hero

Hackman – Forgotten Notes (free download here)

Bo Saris – She’s On Fire (Maya Jane Coles Remix)

Fantastic Mr Fox – Yesterdays Fall feat Alby Daniels

Bondax – Wet Summer (free download here)

Friendzone – Chuch

How To Dress Well – Ocean Floor for Everything (free download here)

Here are a couple of top quality releases from earlier this year well worth checking out:

Storm Queen – Look Right Through (MK Don’t Talk To Me Dub)

Body Double – My Life / Be Strong

Enjoy!

Electronic

This list is a little less melancholy. Opening with Shlohmo's brand new Sink which emotes through downbeat percussion and lush oriental synths, this is followed by the ever-weird Odd Nosdam of anticon fame, with The Kill Tone Two in which a dusky harp melody is damaged by drum machines and off-kilter rap. Mount Kimbie's Between Time twins slow reverb-laden guitar with sharp beats, setting up a very young Kieran Hebden's first big hit, Everything Is Alright. From here we move to more solemn territory, Nicolas Jaar's distinctive minimal soundscapes in the quiet and perfect Colomb, and How to Dress Well's deeply sorrowful Suicide Dream 2. Drifting into less emotional waters with another track from Shlohmo's new album which leads to the inimitable Boards of Canada's fantastic drone piece Corsair. This flows into Burial's most ambient track on record, the short but beautiful UK from his masterwork Untrue. Fennesz lifts the mood slightly with the melancholy fractured summer pop of Caecilia and then a one-two punch of Dilla tracks injects a little soul into the proceedings. After this Memory Tapes' lovely instrumental closer Run Out breathes life and hope into the melancholy sound with a gorgeous melody, followed by my very favourite Gold Panda track, the second You in which a beautiful operatic sample soars over switching beats. Then, let it all fade away with the Scottish duo once more, this time with Farewell Fire which loops more and more quietly until nothing remains.

How to Dress Well – Just Once EP

Suicide Dream 2 (Orchestral Version)

Suicide Dream 3 (Orchestral Version)

The cover of Tom Krell's latest EP looks an awful lot like the cover for the new Washed Out album, yet the positioning of the subjects are telling in how they portray what the artists are trying to say with these releases. The Just Once cover is less sexual and the couple seem to be holding each other more in a desperate attempt just to stay together. Compared to HTDW's cover for his debut LP, Love Remains, which was an obfuscated image of rocks and a street this is effectively a symbolic mission statement – here the obscuring distortion is stripped away and Krell's falsetto set to beautifully composed orchestral soundscapes, and through this a new level of emotional intimacy is uncloaked in his composition.

New arrangements are generally not massively interesting to anyone other than die-hard fans of the particular artists, and normally I'd agree that a song is best heard as it was originally intended, however the personal feel to this release renders it outside this simple statement. Nominally a collection of Suicide Dream tracks, the third dedicated to a recently deceased friend of his, this EP forms an immensely moving orchestral suite than, when heard, is undoubtedly more than worthy of a separate release.

I'm going to jump straight into the standout track here, because it's just that good. Suicide Dream 2 was always a favourite of mine on Love Remains, and it's the only track here that unquestionably gains from the new instrumentation. The track is not stripped but aggrandised by this treatment and the emotions made so much more gripping – the haunting sorrow and desperate pleas are set here on a larger emotional canvas and when Krell's vocals come to the front of the mix with “no air / no air / no air” his voice really touches on something deep down, achieving a landmark moment where Krell's music is more emotive than it has ever been before. It also neatly demonstrates that the falsetto set in the middle of the sparse production on Love Remains is magnificent in its power and range, a fact that an album as broken and produced as his debut couldn't confirm so easily.

Elsewhere the tracks vary in quality. Suicide Dream 1 doesn't suit the new orchestral bearing quite so well, it occasionally comes off as slightly too sugary and loses the melancholy ambience because of slightly clichéd strings but this is no major qualm; and in my opinion most of the reason it suffers is because the original song wasn't quite as strong a composition in the first place. Decisions is nice and suits the other three tracks well, but I wasn't quite sold on the new 'clean' sound to the track and went back to listen to the original. On doing this it became clear that although the new instrumentation works, it nowhere near matches the power of the first because the song gained its weight from those drum beats echoing off into a void and Krell's vocals trying to rise from the dusty production, and without these nuances it's fine but nothing special.

The new track, Suicide Dream 3, which is specifically dedicated to a late friend, is harder to gauge as it has no specific predecessor. It doesn't immediately reveal itself to be a highlight but it works well with the others. However on repeated listens it becomes clear that this is a carefully considered composition that will haunt you long after you've left it, and specifically the fluttering marriage of Krell's vocals and the violin which swell and descend together achieves another flawless emotional peak for the EP.

So this is certainly a quality collection of songs, some brilliant and some pretty good, but it does leave me asking about his previous style: isn't the deconstructionist distortion his 'thing' that makes him a unique producer? The answer is undoubtedly yes, and if this was a sign of HTDW's changed direction for a sophomore album I would be worried, but since Krell has gone on record stating this is a one-off recording style I'm satisfied to see the EP more as a side-project curio borne of intense personal pain which only serves to continue the consistently high quality of his output over the last 12 months.

7/10

Remixes #1 - Dance Mixes

I've reviewed a good few albums so far, and every so often one artist you like will remix another, and sometimes they get it just right.

Here's a little collection of some great tracks that have been remixed to make them more dancefloor-friendly:

Burial & Four Tet - Moth (Silinder Remix)

Great remix giving the whole track a lot more structure and punch.

Fever Ray – If I Had a Heart (Fuck Buttons Remix)

Really dark remix with classic Fuck Buttons stylings in re-invention; a great big wash of sound and a pounding beat.

Gold Panda – Marriage (Star Slinger Remix)

Fantastic remix with a dubby throb and a mad, rushing appropriation of all the elements that make the original so great.

How to Dress Well – Ready for the World (XXXY Remix)

XXXY injects garage with great drops and foot-shuffling beat.

M83 – Run Into Flowers (Jackson's Midnight Fuck Remix)

Glitchy appropriation of M83'S untreated synths. One of the best mixes I've ever heard.

Radiohead – Reckoner (Twelves Remix)

The much-remixed track is brilliantly remodelled into this with great beats driving Yorke's classic falsetto way into the distance.

How to Dress Well – Love Remains

How to Dress Well, a.k.a Tom Krell from Brooklyn, is another star who surfaced from the ether of the internet as a fully formed artist with a unique concept. His sound is lost, swirling fragments of RnB, reconstituted into something ethereal, melancholy, and in perhaps what is its greatest success, catchy.

Single Ready For The World hit the web hard, and made his name in late 2010. His aching falsetto drifts across faltering, lo-fi soundscapes that incorporate clipped beats and many aspects of RnB and funk. Halfway through the song the beat relents, his voice builds and a pure electronic note sings out, it's a static cry into a vast darkness, and a perfect symbol of his music's general aesthetic: a mixture of choppy, distorted RnB instrumentals and an implacable emotional draw somewhere between nostalgia and longing. And this is music with a notable element of nostalgia, in the great tradition arguably started by Boards of Canada and before that Brian Eno, How to Dress Well appropriates elements of music we know and places them in a new setting. The high-pitched vocals of RnB classics are contorted into mournful cries, and these often play second fiddle to the scratchy beats and sounds which flow and ebb throughout the songs. Despite this, the melody of his (often indistinguishable) lyrics are still laden with hooks, as sorrowful as they are, and the loose strains of rhythm and melody which fade in and recede feel as if they are always there, lurking in the vast, desolate soundscape. This is especially notable in the recurring snatch of a funky tune which appears in Endless Rain only to fade out again, but the technique can also be seen implemented more subtly, such as the ghosts of the vocals in My Body starting quietly and drifting off several times before the vocal track proper actually begins- there is a remarkable contingence to the world that his music creates.

Because of the alien re-appropriation of these recognisable genres into something quiet and echoing, the first few times I played through the album I got lost and couldn't really distinguish any particular highlights from the carefully layered mesh of sound. However, a pleasant surprise was that on relistening almost every track had its own interesting nuances and quiet hooks, I realised it was hard to pick out highlights because most of the album is a highlight. Suicide Dream 2 is achingly beautiful and elegaic, You Won't Need Me Where I'm Going has a real force to it and an insanely catchy vocal hook. Lover's Start sounds like radio heard through the wall transformed into a slow groove that disappears for a brief moment to leave his voice fragile and alone, the quick sound of a camera-shutter his only accompaniment. A couple of interesting cuts are the live track Walking This Dumb that hints at a more powerful, stronger side to his sound that perhaps comes out more in live performances, with its driving beat; while collaboration track Decisions (the standout track if I had to pick one) is simple and compelling; the combination of the hard-hitting beat and Krell's soaring vocals is here raised to an extraordinary and quasi-spiritual crescendo.

This album deals with contrasts, it is delicate yet there is a quiet strength to it, the music sometimes sounds lost and adrift in static but there are still hooks to keep you coming back for more. The unique sound is explored with a consistency and elegance and it makes this album more than easy to recommend.

8/10